The Disempowering of Gendered Discourses in the Patriarchal Communities and The Issue of Inheritance

Abstract

This study is undertaken to critically examine, from a linguistic perspective, the disempowering gendered discourse that subtly reproduces the social asymmetries of status and power in favour of men that are nurtured by patriarchal ideologies and discriminatory customs in Beni Weragh community, Relizane, Algeria. The present research work is designed to analyse how disempowering gendered discourses differentiate between males and females languages as two different and separated classes within the same community. It investigates the influence of female-male discourse differences on maintaining the imbalance power between the two genders. Beni Weragh discursive constructions of males and females are analysed in order to distinguish cross gender and cross language differences through the use of linguistic and discourse features such as hedges, interruptions, minimal responses, etc. The objectives of the study are of two folds: to describe the discursive difference in the gendered style of Beni Weragh communication, and to shed light on the social, historical, and contextual set of values and beliefs that discursively construct barriers to Algerian woman’s inheritance in the patriarchal communities. The current study, further, describes the way discourse and specific linguistic items are invested to reinforce and perpetuate Algerian women’s exclusion from inheritance in Beni Weragh community. It seeks to identify how disempowering gendered discourse constructs barriers to Algerian women’s access to inheritance. In relation to the adopted research methodology, this study refers to Fairclough’s approach to critical discourse analysis to understand how disempowering gendered discourses under represent Algerian women and perform gender binaries in Beni Weragh community. To gain greater depth in exploring the research questions, we adopted mixed research- method framework; the quantitative and qualitative approaches. This research work used both interviews and questionnaires to collect data. The results of the study show that there is a wide difference between women’s and men’s discursive styles. The findings also indicate that the patriarchal ideologies and the socio cultural structure of Beni Weragh community are the first and the main factors for such difference. Consequently, the study elaborates on and reveals how different societal discourses produce and reinforce gender inequities that continually and implicitly exclude women from gaining access to inheritance in Beni Weragh community.